A Game He'd Never Win
by Pass Crow
Summary: It was a game, but he'd never win it.  Not ever.  The best he could hope for was a draw.  Maybe a conciliatory loss that would leave him his dignity.  **m/m SLASH**  I don't own SOA, Kurt Sutter does. Don't sue.  Reviews make me smile!


A/N: Here be slash. Don't like it, don't read it, don't bitch. I don't own Sons of Anarchy, Kurt Sutter does. Please review, it makes me smile. Enjoy.

* * *

><p>It was all contrivance. A lesson in lies and half truths that started somewhere in a smoky room. They shared a glance. Ice meeting sky for less than a half second and everything was decided. In a heartbeat he would be looking for an exit, his hands shaking against the leather of his cut as he blasted into the cooler air of the California night. It was a practiced routine. His fingers sliding against leather as he filled his lungs with leftover barbeque smoke and the scent of charred meat. This was the tricky part, the lull between decision and action when the cold light of the stars burned into his leather clad shoulders and the haze of liquor and marijuana lifted slightly. He figured it was a greater chance than fiftyfifty that he'd be going back inside. He didn't always. Sometimes he got on his bike and rode until morning, the vibration of the engine and the banshee wail of the wind mocking everything he tried to run away from.

"Jesus." The stars blurred and he wavered back against the outside wall, his hands pressing flat and still against the rough cinderblocks. The thump of the music vibrated his chest as he pulled half breaths, its tone and timbre changing and growing as the door to his left opened. She was dark haired and lithe. Her unknown body mostly bared, pale and unmarked between strategically placed lines of shredded leather.

It was never the same one twice. Never someone who hung around Charming. Always nameless and always attached to another charter. That was the only thing about her that didn't change. Even the words she whispered against his jaw were the same. As was the sharp nod he gave in answer.

* * *

><p>They worked her between them with almost absent precision, fingers rough and calloused against soft skin. He buried his face in her hair and denied blue eyes. His cut was stripped and puddled somewhere behind them, another hung against the locked doorknob. He groaned into the fetid air and gnashed his teeth into her neck.<p>

"The bed." The words were whispered and he pushed into them, shoving their clasped and trembling bodies towards the sheet covered mattress. The hospital corners were his. They always ended up in his room. He'd changed the bedding just this morning, his hands sure and trained as he folded sheets and tucked blankets. "Climb on honey." Eyes still closed he pressed the woman against the other man, leading her onto the waiting body.

Only then, with the woman placed like a full body restraint did he bend, his jean clad knees thumping into thinly carpeted concrete. His fingers ached as he slipped against loosely tied laces, removing footwear and socks in less time than it took to swallow against the thickness in his throat. The woman was following his lead, stripping the other man from the waist and they met at his thighs, her hands passing warmed denim into his fingers. It was almost choreographed and that thought had him digging into paler skin, nails tipping the toned thighs as he pulled the denim down.

"Christ! Easy." The woman laughed into the snapped command, her clothes already lost to the darkness. He rolled his eyes and loosened his shoulders, letting the motion shrug the long-sleeved shirt down his arms and onto the floor. It was all a game. One that they'd played so often he didn't even have to think about his moves anymore.

"Ollie-ollie-oxen-free." He mumbled, planting his hands against steady knees to push himself up. They weren't listening to him. In the time it had taken him to pull his arms from his sleeves and stand the other man had the woman half gone. Shadows writhed around their joined form as he undid his belt. Wallet chain and pocket change jingled as the tie down of his knife caught somewhere above his knee. With one movement his own jeans were lapping at the top of his boots.

"Lift up." The insides of his legs grazed the outsides of the other man's legs as he pressed to the edge of the bed, his fist already rounding his semi hard erection. With his free hand he rubbed against the woman's back, his palm forcing her to arch her back. "C'mon doll." He knew without seeing that the other man had managed to put on a condom in the few free seconds after he fell into the bed. It was some kind of magic trick, he mused. A slight of hand that in all his years he'd never managed to learn. Now you see it now you don't. His own fingers fumbled and stuttered as he felt along the now rumpled blanket. They closed creakily against the foiled package that was half pressed under the other man's flexing thigh.

He had an awkward moment, fingers unsure in the mandatory darkness but then he was stroking latex full down his shaft, the extra lubrication coating his hand and the dark hair that curled at his base. "Hold her up." His words were hard and blank but the other man was moving before they were finished. The woman's pale ass lifted slightly and there was a liquid sound of shift that set his teeth on edge.

"Go." The other voice was warmed and soft, a voice any woman would love to wake up to in dawn splashed light. As if to counterpoint their differences he thrust forward, slipping fully into her body in one pained motion. The woman keened, her voice rising loud and blocking out the music thumping from the other room, thumping from a world away.

"Shuddup." One of his hands caged around her jaw, fingers slipping her lips and blocking against the noise she was making. He could feel her teeth underneath the mashed line of her mouth. Forcing himself still he felt the other man set a rhythm, the movement of his cock a thin heartbeat away. "Just shut up." His fingers pressed cruelly into her cheek, lifting a bare second before bruising to fist in dark hair. Yanking her back to fit against his chest he led her movements, forcing them both in tandem, fucking the other man with her body as he thrust into her ass.

One hand clinched hard around her stomach while the other pinched at her breasts, thumbs rough and demanding against pebbled skin. He could feel her chest shuddering as her moaned breath burned at the turn of his jaw. Her fingernails scratched at him, one of her arms arched up and back, over his shoulder so that she could draw furrows up his back. The other tightened on his forearm shaping bloodless crescents into dusky skin. Something in the pain made him come, the perfunctory orgasm burning his hips. It was a race he always won. The one that didn't matter.

"Hold her still. Hold still darlin'." The other man didn't even sound out of breath as he pulled his shoulders off the bed and sat up into her body. The darkness may have hidden the way a wide palm brushed into his hair but the touch burned like a brand. His own hands tightened, obligingly holding the dark haired woman still with locked muscles as the other man ran himself unsteadily to a finish. A quick pull of air signaled completion and it was the only sound in the room. Vacantly he realized that one hand had returned to the woman's mouth and she was biting down hard into his knuckles.

"Get out." He curled his fingertips in her mouth and gripped his thumb into the side of her cheek. "Go on." As he spoke he pulled out and lifted her higher into his chest. He felt skin break as he jarred her body off the other man and his blood flooded her mouth. "Get your clothes." Jerking his hand back he settled her into the floor, his eyes flat and glossed in the darkness. She was mewling lightly as she gathered the carefully tatted leather into her breasts. She traded looks with the man on the bed, a hesitant smile building on her lips as she received a quick but meaningless pat from his palm.

"Thank you darlin', be seeing you again." But he wouldn't. That was a rule. To the ruthless game they played. Just like it was a rule that the lights were always off. A thousand rules and regulations that were filed in the back of his mind like charter bylaws. He followed her to the door, his bleeding fingers wrapped tightly in the fabric of the shirt he'd recovered from the floor. There was a flash of light and sound as he let her out, his body shadowed by the thick wood. He glanced towards the bed quickly, knowing that darkness was a heartbeat away. He closed his eyes as he closed the door, trying to imprint the pale form indelibly in his brain, the flexed muscles and the graceful lines. "Lock it."

It didn't always happen like this. Sometimes the order didn't come and they both dressed quickly in the dark before birthing themselves back to the party, squinting at the outside brightness and reeking of unfulfilled sex. He tightened his jaw and complied quickly. His fingers stung and burned, the grit left by her teeth aching down to the bone. He detoured to the dresser without speaking, knowing that words, any words spoken to soon could send the night crashing down on them both. There was an extra pair of riding gloves in his top drawer, the leather too fine and thin to be of much use on the long rides he was used to. Still maintaining silence he pulled one of them on to cover the bleeding wounds above his knuckles, noting absently that the fingers were already swelling.

"Hurry up." There was youthful impatience there, expected and known as he strode back to the bed, his erection already hard again. He smirked at the shiver the other man gave off as he skimmed his leather covered hand up a muscled spine. "That's cold."

"Hush." He barely spoke, framing the word as more of an exhalation as he stepped back into the foot of the bed, his shins hitting the frame. The other man had already turned over, somehow rolling to his hands and knees between that transition from light back to darkness. His calloused fingers ran sweated skin as he rubbed his other hand into rounded buttocks, the leather covering his palm warming with the motion.

There was something possessive in the way he curled his arm around the other man's hips, his uncovered hand skirting the erection that pressed high towards a trim and tapered waist. The groan that whipped from the other man's throat as leather pressed into his body was thin and high. Sliding closer he added another finger, wincing almost as much as the tightened body he rested against as he slowly stroked his wounded fingers to loosen the other man's body.

"Fucking Christ!" He felt the other man dip down, chest coming to rest on strategically placed pillows. "Jesus." He strengthened his touch, folding his hand awkwardly at the palm to add one last finger. The leather and the sticky remains of the woman's orgasm eased his way and he couldn't contain a grunt of satisfaction as he stroked the constricted muscle until it loosened. Without warning he pulled his hand back and fumbled against the bed for another condom. Tactile sight was gone, the thin leather enough of a hindrance that the other man growled shortly and slapped his hand away from the mattress. There was the sound of tearing foil and then warm hands stroked against his cock, easing the thin latex to his base. He swallowed so hard his throat hurt when the hands lingered, firm fingers pressing into the dusky toned divots in his hips before tracing the gray threaded hair that trailed from his navel down.

"Roll over." His voice was lower than usual, saner. There was stilted negation in the way the other man rested into the mattress, his back pressing sweat into the rumpled sheets.

"No." It almost never happened like this. There was too much room for error. Just enough light in the room to make it a risky proposition. But the other man lifted his legs, rolling his hips so that his ankles crossed behind the other man's back. "Like this." He squinted into the darkness, tying to follow lines of pale skin as he centered himself against the other man's body. Teasing forward he watched hooded eyes close and straight teeth bit into swollen lips. Restraint, tenuous in the best of times, broke, and he rushed forward, thrusting himself fully inside the other man and down, his chest pressing smooth skin.

"Goddamn." It took the full span of several breaths to get himself settled against the mattress, his knees pressing deeply as he lifted the other man slightly. The muscles in his forearms flexed as he held himself above the other man, their chests a hairsbreadth apart. Smooth and hard, the prone man's erection pressed his stomach as he thrust hard against light skin. They were both rushing towards orgasm, the press and shift of their bodies teetering between tension and release. He shifted hard over onto one arm, freeing his gloved hand to jack against the other man's erection. With barely a pause he dipped his head down and captured the prone man's lips, his tongue cutting a swath of heat against full lips and white teeth. For that moment he was totally in control. That moment in the darkness was what the rest of the game was for. His tongue thrust down the other man's throat as heat puddle in his hips, burning his thrusts faster. His fingers tightened spasmodically while the other man came against his stomach. It was a game, but he'd never win it. Not ever. The best he could hope for was a draw. Maybe a conciliatory loss that would leave him his dignity.

While he was thinking he came, his hips jutting out hard before stilling painfully. The body underneath his shifted, hands that had been clinging and caressing only moments before pushed and scraped against his skin. He tried to think and breathe and talk and move all at once and failed. The other man rolled out from underneath him, stretching with athletic grace as he collapsed into the mattress with a grunt. Once again silence reigned. It was a rule. He swallowed a pleading word and watched the other man dress in the darkness. His chest hurt and his fingers ached. It was a game he would never win.

"I'm not my mother ya know." The words were even and loose as Jax tightened his belt at his hips. He turned from the bed, the tattoo on his back flexing with well defined muscle as he bent and retrieved the bloodied shirt from the floor. With a glance at the drying maroon he let it fall, pulling his cut over his bare chest. Tig watched him dress from his uncomfortable sprawl, all to aware that his eyes were brightened almost pleadingly. No, he'd never win this game, no matter how often he played.


End file.
